Obama Celebrates Labor Day With Paid Sick Leave and Takes a Swipe at Scott Walker

On Monday, to celebrate Labor Day, the president came to Boston toting that big empty bag of fcks that he no longer gives. The annual breakfast thrown by the Boston Labor Council this year had a few things to distinguish it from previous affairs. First, thanks to the organizing efforts of the service employee unions and the hotel workers unions, the breakfast had a refreshingly diverse flavor to it. (In previous years, it had looked like a bad afternoon at the 19th Hole at Hingham Country Club.) Second, the president showed up and announced that, by executive order, he was mandating paid sick leave for all federal workers and federal contract workers, a further indication of how empty the big bag of fcks truly is. And third, from the dais, at least, the event was a celebration of the great victory for labor won by Tom Brady, who'd stuck it to The Man down in New York on Friday.

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"Now," said Senator Edward Markey, to substantial applause, "no one will ever question the balls of a union worker ever again."

"Even Brady's happy he's got a union," the president said later in his speech. "When Brady needs a union, we definitely need a union."

(These testimonials to Brady's Wobblyhood were undermined later in the day when sharp-eyed reporters in the Patriots locker room noticed a red Make America Great Again ballcap in Brady's stall, indicating that, perhaps, the Libidinous Visitor had paid a call.)

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The breakfast was furthered enlivened by a stemwinder from Senator Professor Warren, who took the opportunity to elbow the guest of honor gently by referring (twice) in her remarks to how "the economic survival of families…hang in the balance on international trade deals," which was a major point of contention between her and the White House all summer. But the most remarkable sight was the president himself, all jangly and loose-limbed, sans jacket and tie, as completely at ease as he ever has seemed to be. It seems as though he has sought strength in a kind of dignified informality of his own devising – and never more clearly than when he jibed at Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their Midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin. Walker's presidential campaign is augering in at the moment, and the president was able to summon up some effective mockery to increase considerably the RPM's of Walker's death spiral.

"If I can take on 100,000 (union) protesters, I can do the same across the globe." "He is bragging about how he destroyed collective bargaining rights in his state…And he says that busting unions prepares him to fight ISIL. I didn't make that up. That's what he said." Then the eyebrows went to the ceiling."Really?"

Outside the hall, actual workers who don't have $27 million contracts were making some actual noise. The Carmen's Union was hollering about the proposals to privatize some functions of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority; new Republican governor, Charlie Baker, is taking advantage of the fact that the T was overwhelmed by the sudden appearance of Hoth World on the banks of the Charles last winter, and he is not letting any opportunity go to waste. The T workers were joined by the local cabdrivers who are seeking to resist the influx of Uber and Lyft into the Boston market. They argued that you are far less likely in a Boston cab to be picked up by a cannibal murderer with outstanding warrants in five states. I may be exaggerating there.

"We were caught by surprise," admitted Donna Blythe-Shaw, a spokesperson for the cabbies. "We didn't think that this thing called Uber could generate capital to the tune of $50 billion."

A problem for organized labor – it always seems to be getting surprised by the Next Big Thing and almost every NextBig Thing is celebrated as a general good, as jobs get scarce and wages stay flat and income inequality grows and grows. Except, I guess, for professional quarterbacks.